Event Details

Mark Levine is a Professor of Social Psychology at Exeter University, and joins us for our November Seminar Series, Violence and its Discontents: groups and identities in security research.

In this talk Mark will examine the ways in which the social psychology of groups and identities can contribute to the analysis of behaviour in the security domain. This seminar will describe a number of projects that use naturally occurring digital data as a way of studying security related behaviour. This will include an analysis of CCTV footage of aggression and violence in public space. Mark will argue that this work points to the importance of understanding how third parties shape the trajectories of aggression to violence. Mark will also talk about an analysis of naturally occurring language in online spaces – and how this can be leveraged for studying the impact of identity processes as they relate to violence and crime.

Bio:

Mark is a Professor of Social Psychology at Exeter University. His research focuses on the role of identities and group processes in pro-social and anti-social behavior. He is particularly interested in the research possibilities afforded by new technologies and digital data. This has included systematic behavioural analysis of CCTV footage of real life violent incidents in public spaces in Britain, Netherlands, Denmark and South Africa. He has also used Immersive Virtual Environments to study the behaviour of bystanders in violent emergencies. More recently he has been using natural language processing of online data to explore how group processes can shape privacy concerns and privacy behaviour. He is also interested in exploring the utility of tracking and sensing technologies to examine interactions in public places.

Registration:

The event is free to attend, but for catering purposes, please register your attendance by emailing securitylancaster@lancaster.ac.uk